


The Copernican  Principle

by splash_the_cat



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-11-05
Updated: 2007-11-05
Packaged: 2017-10-11 20:12:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/116621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/splash_the_cat/pseuds/splash_the_cat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Earth is not in a central, specially favored position.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Copernican  Principle

**Author's Note:**

> For the Halloween Pornucopia prompt: "Sam/Ronon, paint."

 

When Ronon volunteered to play Colonel Carter's bodyguard for the purification ritual, he hadn't expected this.

She'd relaxed enough that her arms weren't crossed tight across her chest anymore. They now rested on the seat of a chair, elongating the lean plane of her bare back as they knelt on the rug laid out on tent floor, the robe she'd worn when she came in a pool of silk around her hips. Firelight from an iron brazier highlighted the curve of her breast, and Ronon squirmed, trying to reminding his traitorous member that the half naked, beautiful woman was his boss.

"Everything okay?"

"Yeah, fine." Ronon picked up a tiny clay cup from the brazier and swirled the re-heated ink with the tip of the long-bristled brush the village elders' had presented to him in a lengthy ceremony earlier that day. When he'd realized what they expected him to do, he almost backed out. "Maybe I'm not the best person for this," he'd said to the woman holding the brush and clay pots of blessed ink out to him, all ready to head back to the Gate and send for Teyla, or find Lorne and his team and make him do it.

"Your _dothnera_ chose you for the task, young man. Do you claim that her judgment of those so close to her is suspect that the very one she chooses to guide her questions her choice?" The elder's expression remained stern, but the skin around her eyes crinkled, and Ronon was pretty sure she was laughing at him.

He'd taken the brush and the ink and the chastisement without another word.

"Just making sure the pattern's right," Ronon said when Colonel Carter peered back over her shoulder at him. The dark red and black ink was vibrant against her skin and he was careful with his stokes; it would last for weeks, the village elders had said, until the next conjunction of the planet's two moons and goddess's stars.

"Better you than me. My artistic skills leave a lot to be desired."

"The way McKay goes on, there's nothing you can't do."

She laughed, but her shoulders tightened and Ronon wanted to run his fingertips along the tendon that stood in sharp relief down the length of her neck. "Rodney's faith in me is charming, if exaggerated for effect. I'm hardly flawless."

"If it helps, I don't think you're flawless." Ronon knew it wasn't what she meant, but while he'd known she was a soldier, until now, until she'd slid the robe from her shoulders with an awkward joke and knelt before him, he'd only thought about it in the abstract, never sure how much of McKay's tales of her prowess were as she'd said, just exaggeration. Her body bore the evidence, though. He had expected her to be a bureaucrat, like what he'd thought Elizabeth Weir was before she'd taught him that strength wasn't just in the arms, and that words were as dangerous as blades. And Samantha Carter taught him he'd been wrong again as he painted the creation of the village's goddess amid the story her skin already told.

"Thanks, I think." Her laughter was little more than a huff of breath, but it was genuine, and, he thought, even a little grateful. "I know you all think I'm some kind of IOA babysitter, but I've broken my fair share of rules."

"You don't strike me as the type." Ronon dragged the pad of this thumb along a slight ridge of a scar above her hip, and when her defensive "I am," caught in her throat, he swore under his breath and yanked his hand away, regretting the impulsive challenge the second it slipped from his tongue, and the presumptuous touch, no matter how good she felt under his fingers. "Colonel, I -"

She caught his wrist in a surprisingly strong grip. "Calling my bluff, Ronon?" she said as she spread her legs, easing back until she straddled his thighs. The robe slipped away as she settled her bottom in his lap, leaving her completely bare before him, and stealing away the rest of his apology. "Well?"

"I…" He wanted to ask her if she was sure, if she knew what she was asking, what she was doing, but he remembered the elder's gentle admonition, so instead he curled his fingers around into the hollow of her hip and into her soft curls and down into the heat of her center. "You're really wet."

"For a while now."

Ronon took the hint. Unfastening his pants, he pulled himself free, and cupping her belly in his palm, fingers toying with the soft flesh between her thighs, he lifted her up enough to slide inside her.

"Good?"

"Oh god, yes, really good." When she arched up and back, grinding down on his fingers, he braced her shoulder with his free hand before she came back too far.

"Careful, the ink."

"Right," she murmured. Using the chair for leverage, she stretched out as she rolled her hips, sinking him all the way in. The delighted sound that she keened out as he thrust up brought him right to the edge of his release, and he dropped his hand to pinch himself hard, hoping the shock of pain would stave off the urge to spill so soon.

"Wait." Holding her still against him, Ronon carefully leaned forward to press his mouth to the knobs of her spine at the base of her neck, above the first words of the goddess's birth. "Earlier," he said against her skin, "I didn't… I wasn't trying to make you prove anything. You don't need to."

"I know." She reached back and cupped his cheek before tangling her fingers with his between her thighs, sure and demanding. "But maybe I wanted to."


End file.
